Fantasy Football Mailbag: Friday 11/18/16

Golden Tate has been trending up recently, so can we trust him in fantasy football in Week 11? And is it time to cut bait with Brandon Marshall?

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Neither Golden Tate nor Marvin Jones has an easy matchup this week with the Jacksonville Jaguars ranking 12th against the pass, according to numberFire's schedule-adjusted metrics. But it's not necessarily prohibitive, so we can certainly trust them in season-long this week, and Tate would likely hold the safer edge.

From Week 6 on, Tate has had at least nine targets in every game. This puts his target market share at 31.6%, which would rank among the best in football if it were for the entire season. Over that same span, Jones has never eclipsed seven targets, and his market share fell all the way to 16.9%. That's a gap that we truly can't ignore.

Jones was dealing with an injury before, and the Detroit Lions faced a ton of teams that are solid against wide receivers in his role. We should expect a bounceback at some point this year. But until we see that, we should assume the new status quo will persist, allowing us to put faith in Tate for Week 11.

Email submission from John Swan:

Any thoughts on what to do with Brandon Marshall? I am holding him largely because I believe Fitzpatrick will eventually be back as the starter and Brandon might have a couple of decent games left. But I could use the WR help. I have no legitimate WR1. Currently Doug Baldwin, Jordan Matthews and Eli Rogers are on my roster in a 14 team league. Tempted to drop him with players like Randall Cobb, Micheal Floyd, Desean Jackson available.

Many condolences to you, John, from a fellow Brandon Marshall owner. If you can still get anything for him in a trade, you absolutely should do so. That seems unlikely given Marshall's game logs. Because of this, the best course of option is to just hold and hope.

Marshall's concerns run deep, including a dip in his raw targets and target market share. This forces us to look at him in a different way than we did earlier in the year, and that is as a receiver with roughly a 25.0% target market share on a bad offense. While that's not a target monster with immense touchdown upside, it's still a fantasy asset that has value. This is why Marshall is a player we should be holding onto, even if doing so is wholly unsatisfactory.

Guys like Randall Cobb and Michael Floyd should likely be owned in all 14-team leagues. But the odds are that you'll have someone more drop-worthy than Marshall, even in his current state. It's frustrating to hang onto a guy struggling as much as Marshall, but sometimes that's just the best option.

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